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A lot or a little?

The parents' guide to what's in this movie.

Positive Messages

Any potential for positive messages in this movie are avoided in favor of crass humor often at the expense of those who are "different."

Positive Role Models & Representations

High school stereotypes abound in this film, as do race and gender stereotypes. While there are plenty of opportunities to show Jessica learning from the mistakes of her snobbish and cruel behavior to those around her, that message is drowned out by the obnoxious humor pervading every scene of this movie.

Violence

Comic violence. A janitor in a mall drives into a post with his vehicle while distractedly staring at a pretty teenage girl on an escalator. Security guards in a mall tackle a teenage girl after she sets off a security alarm. A man falls down metal bleachers after being pepper sprayed in the face by a teenage girl; he is shown falling on his face. A girl who has transformed into a man gets into a pillow fight with her best friends; with her newfound strength, the force of her pillow swings sends her friends airborne and crashing into walls, knocking them out. Characters get into a bar fight, culminating in kicks to the shins and groin.

Sex

Early in the film, characters use their sexuality to take advantage of people and situations. When a cheerleader becomes a thirty-year-old man, her best friend demands to see "her" penis. When the cheerleader calls her boyfriend and sounds like a man and says she regrets not being more affectionate, her boyfriend thinks it's a priest calling. While posing as a male Mexican gardener, the cheerleader listens as her father tells her about his sex life; later, the cheerleader's mother makes a pass at "her." A father is shown in bed reading Playboy magazine, then tilting the magazine sideways to look at the centerfold.

Language

Frequent profanity. "Ass." "Asshole." "B---h." "Dicking around." The word "gay" is frequently thrown around in a negative connotation. Characters call each other "sluts" and "skank hos." Towards the end of the film, a Korean mother, dressed in the manner of a hip hop performer, says to her half-Korean, half-African American daughter, "N----r please." A father, to who he believes is his Mexican gardener, lowers his pants to reveal his "pornstar trim." Early in the film, a teen girl insults another teen girl by making an anorexia joke. Jokes and sight gags regarding periods, and male urination. A man's rear end is shown twice.

Consumerism

After transforming into a thirty-year-old man, a cheerleader is shown using several bottles of clearly-marked Secret Deodorant.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

At the beginning of the film, and appearing intermittently for the rest, the SNL sketch with the punch line "you can put your weed in it" is brought back to life. Teens drink at a dance club, and are later shown drinking at a strip club. A agitated mother puts whiskey in her coffee, and later abuses prescription drugs. The lead character orders several drinks at a dance club. A thirty-year-old man who has switched into a teenage girl's body lights a cigarette and starts to smoke before the cigarette is yanked from her mouth.

What parents need to know

Parents need to know that The Hot Chick includes extremely explicit and offensive humor in just about every category. There are "jokes" about anorexia, pedophile priests, erections, cross-dressing boys, homosexuality, and race. Potential messages about acceptance and maturation are forsaken for cheap and easy attempts at humor. Teens drink in a dance club, and later, drink at a strip club. In the dialogue, there is strong sexual content, as parents openly discuss their sex lives, and in one scene, a mother makes sexual advances on a "Mexican gardener" who is actually her daughter. The content oftentimes feels more R-rated than PG-13; but even for older teens, there isn't anything of merit in this pointlessly crass and tritely formulaic attempt at "comedy."

What's the story?

This body-switching movie begins with an ancient princess using enchanted earrings to switch bodies with a servant girl so that she can get out of an arranged marriage. Cut to the present day where Rob Schneider plays a petty thief who switches bodies with a snobby blonde high school princess named Jessica (Rachel McAdams), after she steals the earrings from a store specializing in ancient artifacts. The rest of the movie is about Jessica (now played by Schneider) tries to get back into her old body. Along the way, we are subjected to horrifyingly awful jokes about the different ways men and women go to the bathroom, a cross-dressing child, priest molestation of young boys, the thief (now in Jessica's body) having to buy tampons, bulimia, places to hide marijuana, parents of different races, homosexuality, and incest.

Is it any good?

This movie is horrendously crude and vulgar. Even by the low standards of Saturday Night Live-alumni movies, and by the even lower standards of Adam Sandler-produced movies, THE HOT CHICK is excruciating, loathsome, offensive, vile, and, even worse, it is not funny. To add insult to injury, it is also much too long.

There is a lot of blame to go around here -- from producer Adam Sandler to star and co-writer Rob Schneider (who, bi-racial himself, should be especially ashamed of the racist stereotyping of a Korean woman and her bi-racial daughter), to director Tom Brady, who brings out the worst in his cast and has no sense of comic timing whatsoever. But we have to reserve a special blame category for the MPAA, which gave the film a PG-13 rating when its content is closer to NC-17.

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